String and Life Blog-A-Venture

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As most of you are aware, certain mega business interests have been trying to hide behind a bill supposedly meant to protect Libraries, museums, and educational research.

IF THESE BILLS DID ONLY THAT, then NONE of the members of more than 70 groups would continue to oppose the pending legislation.

Now, we are once again “up against it”

For the last 36 hours, after repeatedly assuring us that the bill would NOT be considered, apparently we have been deliberately misled
AGAIN

Undoubtedly you will be told that no action is planned but we have been told that before and it is ONLY by active participation of the Artistic community we were able to keep this off the floor UNTIL NOW.

Joanne Fink is the “Chair” of the OWOH group so I will let her explain (below) what we need to do.

However, I would ADD, when you call Congress members office,

You NEED to tell this THIS IS ABOUT YOUR LIVELIHOOD or the livelihood fo folks you would call friend – both those who sell patterns and those who offer them for free to users for the benefits they bring to thier personal websites.

Frankly all the financial bailouts in the world won’t matter if they thoughtlessly put you out of business by allowing big business (Getty, Corvus, and Google) the opportunity to screw it up a pattern author’s property rights as they have allowed banks & financial institutions to do thus far.

Congress is being LIED to by the Chair of the Copyright division and you need to let them know this matters – ONLY two organizations who lobbyist have other loyalties have been consulted.

Last but not least, you need to make sure they understand you vote and will remember all who did not OPPOSE this bill – including those who “just let it happen” by not actively opposing it.

Wheat

P.S. Permission to forward this information to ANY Group you think will have folks who will take action to stop the Stealing of your Property Rights